Vasulka Woody
Since the mid-1970s, Woody Vasulka's work has focused on a rich articulation of the syntactical potential of electronic imaging. After producing a pioneering body of tapes in collaboration with Steina in the early 1970s, he has since undertaken a sophisticated exploration of the narrative and metaphorical meaning of technological images. Vasulka's development of an expressive image-language has evolved from a rigorous deconstruction of the materiality of the electronic signal, through experiments with new technologies of digital manipulation, to the application of these imaging codes to narrative strategies.
The culmination of this investigation, Art of Memory (1987), is one of the major works in video. In this lushly textured, haunting essay, Vasulka applies a highly evolved imaging grammar to a metaphorical discourse of collective memory, history, and the meaning of recorded images -- envisioned as a spectacular memory-theater inscribed upon the landscape of the American Southwest.
In his early investigations of the vocabulary of such devices as the Digital Image Articulator, Vasulka emphasized the dialogue between artist and machine, as manifested in real-time creativity and process-oriented experimentation. Through digital manipulation, he continues to explore the malleability and objectification of the electronic image as a means of rendering a complex inventory of rhetorical devices. With the fantastical "electronic opera" The Commission (1983), Vasulka began to apply these codes to the development of narrative and metaphorical strategies, an inquiry that has dominated his later work.
Woody Vasulka was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1937. He studied at the School of Industrial Engineering in Brno and the Academy of Performing Arts Faculty of Film and Television in Prague. With Steina, he has won numerous awards and grants; their collaborative works have been exhibited internationally (see Steina and Woody Vasulka). His individual works have been shown in numerous exhibitions, at festivals and institutions including the International Center of Photography, New York; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; and the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, New York. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
After producing a pioneering body of tapes in collaboration with Steina in the early 1970s, Woody Vasulka has investigated the narrative, syntactical and metaphorical potential of electronic imaging. His development of an expressive image-language began as a rigorous deconstruction of the materiality of the electronic signal, and has evolved to the application of imaging codes and digital manipulation to narrative strategies.
Woody Vasulka: Selected Works 1973-74, 29:01 min, color, sound
Vocabulary 1973, 4:17 min, color, sound
The Matter 1974, 3:56 min, color, sound
C-Trend 1974, 9:03 min, color, sound
Explanation 1974, 11:45 min, color, sound
Artifacts 1980, 21:20 min, b&w and color, sound
The Commission 1983, 44:55 min, color, sound
Art of Memory 1987, 36 min, color, sound
http://www.vasulka.org
http://www.artscilab.org/VasulkaArchive.html
http://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/collection/vasulka/archives/index.html
Woody Vasulka
Woody Vasulka was born Bohuslav Peter Vasulka in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1937. After graduating from a technical school, he was placed in a nearby factory. Dissatisfied with his lot, he tried for the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague to study film. Several documentary films later he graduated and moved in 1965 to New York with his wife Steina. Woody freelanced as an editor for various large format multi-screen projects. Upon encountering the half-inch video "portapak" in 1969, he quit film to dedicate himself fully to working with electronic media.
In 1971, with Steina, he founded The Kitchen, an electronic media theater in NYC. The same year, under Electronic Art Intermix’s umbrella, he formed with Steina and Eric Siegel the group Perception, which was supported by the New York State Council on the Arts. After some pioneering work in video, he moved to Buffalo in 1973 to become a professor at the Center for Media Study. In 1976 he bought a DEC LSI-11 computer, which inspired him to build together with Jeffrey Schier rare and original imaging devices including the "Digital Image Articulator." In 1980 he moved to New Mexico, where he continues his investigation into "The New Epistemic Space." Since 1993, he is also a visiting professor at the Faculty of Arts of the Polytechnic Institute in his hometown,
Brno, Czech Republic.
In 1992 under a commission from Peter Weibel, the Vasulkas curated "Eigenwelt der Apparate Welt: Pioneers of Electronic Art," an exhibition of early electronic art toolmakers for Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, with a videodisc interactive catalogue. With Steina, Woody has been an artist in residence at the National Center for Experiments in Television (NCET) at KQED in San Francisco and at WNET/Thirteen in New York. He has received funding from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS), the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the Guggenheim Foundation, and the New Mexico Arts Division, American Film Institute's Maya Deren Award and in 1995 Siemens-Medienkunstpreis. In 1998 he received an honorary doctorate from the San Francisco Arts Institute and the first Award for outstanding achievements in the field of Media Arts from the National Association of Media and Culture.
Woody has participated in major video festivals worldwide, given lectures, published articles, composed music, built instruments of electronic visualization and made numerous videotapes. Since his move to Santa Fe in 1980, he has completed two major videotapes, The Commission and Art of Memory and in the 90s, he built six large scale media constructions: Translocations, Automata, Friendly Fire, Stealth, Scribe, and The Maiden in a series titled The Brotherhood, which was exhibited at the InterCommunication Center in Tokyo in summer 1998.
Before the end of the millenium, with a collective of well-known media artists of Santa Fe, Vasulka initiated and conducted a workshop titled Techne&Eros through the Santa Fe Art Institute, which led to the formation of the Art and Science Laboratory, a research group dedicated to the practices common to art and sciences. Presently, he is organizing the Vasulka Archive, a large collection of papers, publications, tapes and instruments related to the history of electronic art.
With Steina, for over three decades, Woody Vasulka has maintained his presence on the international media art scene, formulating and articulating esthetic strategies of the new media.
http://www.artscilab.org
The culmination of this investigation, Art of Memory (1987), is one of the major works in video. In this lushly textured, haunting essay, Vasulka applies a highly evolved imaging grammar to a metaphorical discourse of collective memory, history, and the meaning of recorded images -- envisioned as a spectacular memory-theater inscribed upon the landscape of the American Southwest.
In his early investigations of the vocabulary of such devices as the Digital Image Articulator, Vasulka emphasized the dialogue between artist and machine, as manifested in real-time creativity and process-oriented experimentation. Through digital manipulation, he continues to explore the malleability and objectification of the electronic image as a means of rendering a complex inventory of rhetorical devices. With the fantastical "electronic opera" The Commission (1983), Vasulka began to apply these codes to the development of narrative and metaphorical strategies, an inquiry that has dominated his later work.
Woody Vasulka was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1937. He studied at the School of Industrial Engineering in Brno and the Academy of Performing Arts Faculty of Film and Television in Prague. With Steina, he has won numerous awards and grants; their collaborative works have been exhibited internationally (see Steina and Woody Vasulka). His individual works have been shown in numerous exhibitions, at festivals and institutions including the International Center of Photography, New York; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; and the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, New York. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
After producing a pioneering body of tapes in collaboration with Steina in the early 1970s, Woody Vasulka has investigated the narrative, syntactical and metaphorical potential of electronic imaging. His development of an expressive image-language began as a rigorous deconstruction of the materiality of the electronic signal, and has evolved to the application of imaging codes and digital manipulation to narrative strategies.
Woody Vasulka: Selected Works 1973-74, 29:01 min, color, sound
Vocabulary 1973, 4:17 min, color, sound
The Matter 1974, 3:56 min, color, sound
C-Trend 1974, 9:03 min, color, sound
Explanation 1974, 11:45 min, color, sound
Artifacts 1980, 21:20 min, b&w and color, sound
The Commission 1983, 44:55 min, color, sound
Art of Memory 1987, 36 min, color, sound
http://www.vasulka.org
http://www.artscilab.org/VasulkaArchive.html
http://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/collection/vasulka/archives/index.html
Woody Vasulka
Woody Vasulka was born Bohuslav Peter Vasulka in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1937. After graduating from a technical school, he was placed in a nearby factory. Dissatisfied with his lot, he tried for the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague to study film. Several documentary films later he graduated and moved in 1965 to New York with his wife Steina. Woody freelanced as an editor for various large format multi-screen projects. Upon encountering the half-inch video "portapak" in 1969, he quit film to dedicate himself fully to working with electronic media.
In 1971, with Steina, he founded The Kitchen, an electronic media theater in NYC. The same year, under Electronic Art Intermix’s umbrella, he formed with Steina and Eric Siegel the group Perception, which was supported by the New York State Council on the Arts. After some pioneering work in video, he moved to Buffalo in 1973 to become a professor at the Center for Media Study. In 1976 he bought a DEC LSI-11 computer, which inspired him to build together with Jeffrey Schier rare and original imaging devices including the "Digital Image Articulator." In 1980 he moved to New Mexico, where he continues his investigation into "The New Epistemic Space." Since 1993, he is also a visiting professor at the Faculty of Arts of the Polytechnic Institute in his hometown,
Brno, Czech Republic.
In 1992 under a commission from Peter Weibel, the Vasulkas curated "Eigenwelt der Apparate Welt: Pioneers of Electronic Art," an exhibition of early electronic art toolmakers for Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, with a videodisc interactive catalogue. With Steina, Woody has been an artist in residence at the National Center for Experiments in Television (NCET) at KQED in San Francisco and at WNET/Thirteen in New York. He has received funding from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS), the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the Guggenheim Foundation, and the New Mexico Arts Division, American Film Institute's Maya Deren Award and in 1995 Siemens-Medienkunstpreis. In 1998 he received an honorary doctorate from the San Francisco Arts Institute and the first Award for outstanding achievements in the field of Media Arts from the National Association of Media and Culture.
Woody has participated in major video festivals worldwide, given lectures, published articles, composed music, built instruments of electronic visualization and made numerous videotapes. Since his move to Santa Fe in 1980, he has completed two major videotapes, The Commission and Art of Memory and in the 90s, he built six large scale media constructions: Translocations, Automata, Friendly Fire, Stealth, Scribe, and The Maiden in a series titled The Brotherhood, which was exhibited at the InterCommunication Center in Tokyo in summer 1998.
Before the end of the millenium, with a collective of well-known media artists of Santa Fe, Vasulka initiated and conducted a workshop titled Techne&Eros through the Santa Fe Art Institute, which led to the formation of the Art and Science Laboratory, a research group dedicated to the practices common to art and sciences. Presently, he is organizing the Vasulka Archive, a large collection of papers, publications, tapes and instruments related to the history of electronic art.
With Steina, for over three decades, Woody Vasulka has maintained his presence on the international media art scene, formulating and articulating esthetic strategies of the new media.
http://www.artscilab.org